As you may know, a
religion has three main purposes:
1) to alleviate the
debilitating fear of death which almost every human being has and which almost
certainly is genetically inherited because evolutionally beneficial;
2) to explain
natural phenomena for which the humans have not yet found a satisfactory
explanation;
3) to give the
leaders of the society an ideology with which to justify their demand that the
rest of the population submit to their rule.
I shall not
elaborate on that here. I only mentioned it to remind you that when reading
religious writings, it is advisable not to forget that that particular religion
was created by somebody and directed at somebody. Maybe a religion was not
actually created with a target audience in mind, but it survived to today
because it found a target audience for which it was very suitable.
Recently, while I
was reading some religious texts, it occurred to me that one can observe a
rather striking difference in a way how three major religions (Christianity,
Islam and Buddhism; I'll leave our Judaism and Hinduism because I know very
little about them) approach the third main purpose of religion – keeping the
common people in line, that is encouraging the individual to do whatever the
society and its rulers happen to require from them at the moment.
If we simplify, not
only their actual preachings, but more importantly their way of preaching,
to its essence, we will come to the conclusion that:
1. Christianty is a
religion of fear.
It says that if you
don't do what the nobles and priests tell you, you will suffer unspeakable
torment in Hell after the death of your physical body.
2. Islam is a
religion of gain.
It's not hard to
notice how Moslems are motivated much less by the fear of hell than tempted by
the delights supposedly waiting for them in paradise. Houris and all that.
Christianity has nothing of the kind. Paradise is just a moderately nice place
to be. You want to get there not for its own sake, but in order to avoid Hell.
More than that,
Islam tempts believers with all-but-heavenly pleasures already in this world.
While the Quran prescribes certain rules for intergender relations, it states
specifically that with women looted in war, one can do as one pleases. There is
nothing like that in Christianity. Quite on the contrary – pleasure as such is
a sin. Fight against pleasure is what Christianity is all about – brought to
the extreme by Calvinism, but unmistakably present since the very beginnings of
Christianity. It is no exaggeration to say that the association of sex drive
with guilt is the most important principle that lies on the basis of the whole
Christian faith. (I'm not the first one to point that out, of course.)
3. Buddhism is a
religion of reason.
Other than
Christianity and Islam, Buddhism doesn't urge people to fight for or against
something. Rather than insisting on subservience, it persuades you to stop trying
to achieve anything. By the means of psychological facts and logical arguments,
as well as occasional skilful truth-twisting, it suggests that meekly
submitting to whatever life throws at you is in your best interest. Pleasure is
neither a sin (as in Christianity) nor a reward of doing the right things (as
in Islam), it is unachievable. Whatever you do to be happy, Buddhism
consistently and vehemently insists, will bring you a lot more suffering than
pleasure. It is therefore reasonable to give up striving for happiness. The
(relatively) best you can ever hope for is to minimize your suffering, which
you can achieve by making yourself numb to everything and, ideally, giving up
your very identity. Buddhism can be summed up in one sentence – "Happiness
is impossible, but if you don't care about anything, then at least you don't
suffer." But the main point I wanted to stress here is that Buddhism doesn't
say what you have to do – it tells you that following their teachings is
in your best interest. Christianity and Islam say that you must work on
your master's field and pay your taxes to the king in order to save your soul
from hell. Buddhism says you can't do anything about it, so it's in your best
interest to put up with it and learn not to care. Christianity says self-denial is your obligation. Buddhism says it's the lesser evil.
I think there can
be little doubt that the original target audiences of those three religions –
Europeans, Semites and East Asians – were very different in their prevailing
mentality. I dare say, the difference between their target audiences can be
observed even today. Admittedly, it is only thanks to historical chance that
Islam is very popular in Indonesia and Christianity in the Philippines. From
the anthropological point of view, it could just as well be the other way
around. But I don't think it's an accident that Christianity never seriously
caught on in India, China and Japan, and neither did Buddhism outside of East
Asia – and that Islam is far more popular among the blacks than among the
whites.
Does it mean that
the white people are very cowardly, the semites are very greedy and the
orientals are very rational? I rather disagree with that. But understanding the fundamental
differences of the three big religions is surely helpful for better
understanding of the peoples among which they are popular.
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